The 2025 mayoral race is underway; we need visionaries to step up
Donald J. Trump is the first person from New York City to be elected president of the United States in more than a century, and now he’s been elected twice. So it feels fitting that the fallout from his second victory will shape the 2025 elections for mayor of New York City.
Progressives are lining up to oppose Mayor Eric Adams, an incumbent weakened by unpopularity and corruption scandals. The left would undoubtedly like to replace him with an ideologue who will emphasize policies like allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections or freezing rents in stabilized apartments.
Trump’s surprising strength in outer-borough Latino and Asian communities is consistent with his success in attracting working-class voters across the nation. Clearly, the Democratic professionals in Manhattan, Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope cannot rely on votes from working-class communities of any color. It is conceivable that the Republicans will generate a new cadre of mayoral candidates in 2025, running as quasi-clones of Trump.
Although it is not possible to predict who will run for mayor in the Republican and Democratic primaries, the vulnerability of the incumbent mayor will attract many new aspirants since ranked choice voting and the city's public financing of campaigns makes running for public office a relatively low-risk endeavor.
What the crop is currently missing is a sober, results-focused pragmatist who places as a first priority the efficient delivery of basic city services, chief among them policing, schooling and health-care and a commitment to economic growth as a way to address income inequality. Andrew Cuomo, a high-name-recognition candidate who sees himself as just such a problem-solver, may throw himself in the ring — but given his serious downsides, he shouldn’t be the only one.
The coming months are a chance New Yorkers must not squander to learn about the candidates seeking elective office and to rigorously test candidates’ ideas about how to deal with tough problems, some of which have gotten worse over the past decade.
New York City has endured a series of major ruptures since the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001: the Great Recession, Hurricane Sandy and COVID. At our best, we’ve met these challenges with strong leadership.
Less than two months after thousands perished at the World Trade Center, voters elected Michael R. Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire who had financed his own campaign, to be mayor. Bloomberg brought an aggressive approach to the mayoralty, taking on tasks that his predecessors had failed to do. Focused on outcomes, he didn’t send empty ideological signals to excite the city’s progressives.
Bloomberg persuaded the state Legislature to give the city’s mayor control of the public school system, invested in new parks and rebuilt old ones from McCarren Park to The High Bridge to Washington Square Park. He also focused on information technology rather than finance as the engine of city growth. That’s why Google has 15,000 employees in New York City and why major universities have invested millions to strengthen their science and engineering programs here. All of this took vision and, more importantly, independence — meaning, a leader who wasn’t doing the bidding of any particular constituency.
New York doesn’t need another Bloomberg, but it does need a mayor who can put solid governance first and see around corners, rather than being trapped in existing political debates.
The coming months are a chance New Yorkers must not squander to learn about the candidates seeking elective office and to rigorously test candidates’ ideas about how to deal with tough problems, some of which have gotten worse over the past decade.
How should we treat the mentally ill who live on sidewalks and in subway stations? Is there a way to stop the surge of robberies in local bodegas and drugstores, to raise the reading scores of our public school students, to build housing that New Yorkers can afford — and to finally close Rikers Island? Platitudes are easy. Actionable plans are hard.
We can’t expect Washington D.C. to solve our problems. New York City is on its own; our congressional delegation will understandably focus on beating back Republican efforts to dismantle federal programs. New York needs a mayor who wants to be mayor, not a mayor who wants to be a celebrity or a governor. And we must not allow the mayoral candidates to indulge their fantasies and tell us how they will persuade Congress to help New York. That game is over.
There is a reason ambitious politicians want to be mayor here; it’s a chance to actually make major change happen. New York City’s highest elected official has more power over the municipal government than any other mayor in the United States.
So Trump’s victory is not an excuse for New Yorkers to lose heart, pursue Reiki or give up on their local government. To the contrary, this is an opportunity for New York City to be bold and to show how local government can try new ways to solve old problems. We can and should modernize the city’s outmoded zoning. Leaders should also do the small things that have a large impact, like keeping neighborhood parks and playgrounds clean for New Yorkers who do not have second homes, and opening municipal pools on Memorial Day weekend, not when the school year ends.
These are the kinds of ideas that should be at the center of the 2025 mayoral campaign: meaningful improvements in the quality of life of our city, not ideological posturing.